Brown has global ideas, local focusUrban planner running for mayor says many small successes can make Houston better

CAROLYN FEIBEL, HOUSTON CHRONICLE |
October 12, 2009

As darkness fell, Peter Brown's assistant pulled the SUV into a parking lot at the Third Ward Multi-Service Center. The young woman, Lindsay Lanagan, pulled lawn signs from the back, while Brown slapped a campaign sticker on his breast pocket. They made for the nearest door, which turned out to be locked. As did the next. And the next. They began a hurried trek around the perimeter of the building.

“Apologize for being late,” Lanagan cheerfully reminded Brown.

They were behind schedule, arriving in the mostly black neighborhood after an appearance before a mostly white crowd opposing a high-rise near Rice University.

Brown told Lanagan to bring the SUV around front. They had to get in and out quickly, he reminded her. The former Milwaukee mayor, John Norquist, was in town that night to speak at a private fundraising dinner for Brown. Norquist leads the Congress for the New Urbanism, which promotes compact “walkable communities” and “green building” – all favorite campaign-trail phrases for this architect-turned-politician.

Brown, a trim 72-year-old grandfather, was a man in a hurry. Houston needed him. After only four years on the 14-member City Council, he had decided to run for mayor instead of pursing a final term on council. As mayor, he would have more power to push forward his “blueprint” for the city, he said. This meant creating a city government that plans for the future, instead of “reacting” to crises as they erupt.

Council colleagues tease Brown for his focus on urban planning, calling him “Peter Plan.” It does not bother him.

“Failing to plan is planning to fail,” he said. “In every business you've got to have a business plan and whether it's making the city safe or the flooding issue or the transportation issue, in all of these you've got to have a rationalized plan. In many of these issues, I say if we had a plan, we'd probably save the taxpayer a lot of money, especially in a lot of these capital projects.”

Explores other cities

Brown's vision can be hyper-local, rooted in the belief that thousands of tiny improvements at the ground level can add up to a more attractive, more efficient city. He has bemoaned the ugliness of proliferating utility poles and sagging power lines in Houston's neighborhoods.

During Lee Brown's administration, Peter Brown helped found the Main Street Coalition to guide the redevelopment of the thoroughfare. He “went to the mat” with Public Works bureaucrats and forced them to include a grassy median when they widened Main through the Museum District, according to his son, Chris Brown, a staffer for Councilman Ron Green.

Brown joins his microscopic focus with a world-ranging appetite for ideas. He travels widely, particularly to France, where his third wife, oil-services heiress Anne Schlumberger, has a vacation home in Provence. Brown enjoys exploring other cities and seeing how their successes could help Houston.

For example, while in Strasbourg, France he saw that city's new light-rail cars. Back home, he worked to promote that model to Metro.

Brown is a particular fan of Denver, which he said has done a good job building rail lines along freeways, cooperating with nearby governments and aggressively attacking homelessness.

He loves cities and has spent his career working as an architect or urban planner across the country. In Houston, he redesigned the fountain promenade section of Hermann Park, worked on the restoration of the Sabine Street Bridge and nearby trails along Buffalo Bayou, and designed the Hillcroft Transit Center and Dowling Middle School, among others.

After receiving his first master's degree in French from the University of California at Berkeley, he enlisted in the Army in 1960, and served as a clerk at Fort Leonard Wood in rural Missouri.

After a year of active service, Brown moved into active reserves while attending the University of Pennsylvania. He eventually received master's degrees in architecture and urban planning.

“It was a big influence,” he said. “It was an interesting mixture of — of course, politics — and interesting people with a sense of civic duty.”

He returned to his hometown of Houston in 1982.

As a councilman and mayoral candidate, Brown has continued to work with the black community, garnering support from scores of local black ministers and making a show of his public appearances with musical celebrities such as George Clinton and Houston rapper Trae.

Brown had two children with his first wife and three with his second, before marrying Schlumberger in 1995. Jointly, they preside over 15 grandchildren.

Brown has poured more than $2.4 million of his own money into his mayoral race. He also has been a prominent contributor to local charities and arts organizations.

His focus on housing and the physical environment is evidenced by his service on the boards of Habitat for Humanity, Trees For Houston, Blueprint Houston, The Park People, and The Gulf Coast Institute (now Houston Tomorrow).

“He has so much institutional knowledge on a wide range of topics that affect the city,” son Chris Brown said.

Zoning question

Brown's high profile in philanthropic circles, and his penchant for theorizing around the council table, has led some City Hall insiders to view him as an elitist intellectual who has good ideas, but little idea how to implement them.

Some council colleagues said that Brown likes to claim credit for policies he voted for, but left the behind-the-scenes, heavy lifting political work to others.

For some critics, Brown's civic alliances betray an agenda to zone, or at least regulate, Houston's infamously lax development environment.

Brown denies that he favors zoning, saying publicly that “for better or for worse, it's too late for zoning in this city,” but he does favor what he calls an “outcomes-driven” development code to help protect neighborhoods from inappropriate development and degrading influences.

Among his role models, Brown includes Paul Tillich, the Christian philosopher who wrote The Courage to Be.

Brown said reading Tillich taught him “you've really got to be the person you're meant to be … take a leap of faith.”